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More reasons to visit Chawton

By Deborah Yaffe, Feb 1 2018 02:00PM

The most beloved Austen site in England -- Jane Austen’s House Museum, aka Chawton Cottage, the Hampshire home where Austen wrote or revised all six of her completed novels – was closed last month. But it’s reopening today with some exciting programming for 2018, which marks the bicentennial of the publication of both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

For the next seven months, Chawton’s exhibits will “explore the themes of family and friendship in both Northanger Abbey and in the lives of the Austen family,” on the premise that the Morlands’ big, noisy clergy family might be partly inspired by the Austens’ big, noisy clergy family.

Then, in the last four months of 2018, a year that also marks the one hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I, the museum will launch an exhibit linked to Persuasion, set during the last months of the Napoleonic Wars. The exhibit will look at “the impact of war on Jane Austen's novels, the life of the Austen family, and on the country at large.”

Interesting stuff! Once again, it’s a good year to visit Chawton cottage. But, then, every year is a good year to visit Chawton cottage. . .